The value is already there.
It just hasn't been seen yet.
Business Model Innovation is the optimisation of activity systems. Many believe innovation comes from outside: a new technology, a new idea, a new market. It can — but the starting point is always what you already do. We make your activities visible, find the value no one has seen, and optimise the system as a whole. Practical advisory, grounded in research.
A hospital had no idea a loss running into the tens of millions was hidden in a workflow no one had ever questioned.
That's the case for most companies. Business Model Innovation (BMI) finds that value — practical and research-based at the same time.
The research behind the advisory
Horn Innovation is run by Ole Horn Rasmussen, PhD and MSc in Economics. He co-developed the academic definition of a business model as an activity system — the definition the entire method is built on.
In 2015 he introduced "Vertical Butterfly", the theoretical core of the BMI process, underpinned by nine research-based tools. Documentation is available on request.
Horn Innovation is your temporary team member. Together we optimise activity systems, starting from what the organisation already does — so that the value in processes, services and products, economic and non-economic, is put to full use. The work draws on broad experience in business models, BMI, project management and organisational development.
We map before we choose a strategy
A business model is, by definition, an activity system. That is why business model innovation, at its core, is about optimising activity systems: which activities create value, which do not, and how do they fit together? This also holds when innovation comes from outside. When a company — or a department within a company — is defined as an activity system, it consists of many business models: activities. Every company, without exception, has some activities that could create more value. Some activities may even work against value creation. When the focus is on activity, new frames and norms are set for how the company suddenly understands innovation — and for how innovation automatically becomes a natural part of employees' everyday work. Because the focus becomes very precise: value creation — both monetary and non-monetary. We find the solution together — typically starting from mapping and workshops, done digitally too, so you're not limited by where in the world you happen to be. All work is data-driven: the foundation is data the company already has, visible and invisible, but rarely put to active use.
Mapping begins
The activity system is identified from data the company already has. Visible and invisible data are gathered and validated across the organisation, so the picture becomes complete from the company's own perspective. The process is the same whether the starting point is the whole (the entire organisation) or a single business model/a single, well-defined activity.
Mapping deepens and concludes
Phase 1 reflects the organisation's own view of the business model/activity. Now other perspectives are applied. In collaboration, we select one or more dimensions of The Business Model Cube. Together we decide how deep the mapping should go and when the overview is accepted — because even a small data gap makes a strategy vulnerable.
Modelling, strategy and execution
The full activity system is clear — and the foundation is solid enough to support a strategy. Now comes the decisive phase: the business model/activity is modelled, and concrete scenarios are developed for management to choose between. The strategy is then chosen and execution begins — often with a short-term first implementation. The strategy is built to last; only exogenous shocks call for a new strategic focus.
The development of the Vertical Butterfly
The model did not arrive as a finished theory. It grew over many years – from questions on the blackboard to the model the method builds on today.
Method in depth · Horn Innovation
The development of the Vertical Butterfly
From questions on the blackboard to a shared language for business model innovation
Ole Horn Rasmussen, PhD · 2004 →
A hard core – and a protective belt
Protective belt
Hard core
not negotiable
auxiliary hypotheses that are tested, adjusted and discarded
The core: basic research
Classical, neoclassical, institutional, co-evolutionary and ecological economic theory. What Imre Lakatos calls the hard core: the part that does not change, however often the model is tested.
The belt: where practitioners come in
The Vertical Butterfly and the Business Model Cube were developed in repeated rounds until the model was ready for the market.
Synthesis
→
Test and revise, in rounds
→
Market
It started as a question
The laboratory at Aalborg University: how does a business model connect with its surroundings? The blackboard tested definitions against other researchers’ work – the basis of the Where to Look model.
The names on the board – e.g. Scharmer and Osterwalder – are practitioners in business development. The theoretical and conceptual work is ours.
From model to execution
2013 · first edition
Formalised internally at AAU: Black Box II (the environment) as the ecosystem level, Black Box I (the company) via the Cube method.
2013 · workshop
Two mirrored funnels meeting in the company’s business model. The shape is largely unchanged today.
2015 · workshop
The model’s layers and positions tested against new problems.
One butterfly – zoomed to different levels
The waist can sit at Business Level, Business Model Level or Cube Dimension Level – depending on whether you are analysing a company, a business model or one of the Cube’s dimensions.
Business Level at the waist – six levels of abstraction below the ecosystem platform
Business Model Level at the waist – the Where to Look model (2016)
Where to Look II – the real context for business model innovation
Same words – different levels of abstraction
In the boardroom everyone speaks the same language – but each from their own perspective. People think they mean the same thing. Often they do not.
The Vertical Butterfly makes the level explicit:
“Now we are out in the ecosystem.”
“Now we are talking at Business Level.”
“Now we are at Cube Level.”
When we say A, we mean A – not B.
Example
The department as a business model
Everything above and alongside it – internal units included – becomes, by definition, the department’s ecosystem.
Other departments become customers, partners or competitors. Overlook this, and value creation suffers.
That is why Where to Look is a model employees keep working against – not just a tool for the modelling phase.
Modelling is not mapping
Modelling
Where is the waist?
- Determines which level you are actually analysing.
- Above the waist: ecosystems – your relation is active, resting or none.
- Below the waist: what is mapped with the Cube’s 7 questions.
- There is no single right answer: many levels, many possible directions.
Mapping
What is going on?
- About data, not models – reality as the organisation itself sees it.
- The data already exists: in people’s heads, procedures, workflows, values, machines, calculations, physical settings and plans.
- The starting point for all business models and their innovations.
Before mapping: where should the company invest in innovation?
Mapping needs the same starting point as the modelling it will support. The initial questions are themselves part of business model innovation.
1
Which opportunities create the most value?
2
Which are the most realistic?
3
Where is the low-hanging fruit?
4
Which are demanding, but highly valuable in the medium term?
5
Short term – or which time horizon?
The first decision: which language?
Business language
or
Activity language
Activity language (since 2018) is used where “business” does not fit: parts of healthcare, the public sector and civil society.
The method is the same: the same 7 dimensions, the same Cube, the same Where to Look logic.
But the choice is not cosmetic. A word that feels foreign slows motivation and learning before the work has even begun.
The Cube’s 7 questions – in activity language
1. What does the activity offer?
2. Who is the activity offered to?
3. What values does the activity create?
4. How is it offered – what are the workflows and value chain?
5. What competences does the activity require? – four sub-dimensions:
HR
Organisational systems and structures
Technologies
Culture
Technologies ›
Product technologies
Production technologies
Process technologies
6. Who are the network and collaboration partners (ecosystem)?
7. What are the activity’s relations?
“Business Model is a language.”
JC, professor and researcher, New York · network partner of Horn Innovation · conference in Zagreb, 2014
Working with the Cube and the Vertical Butterfly changes how you think: value creation becomes a keyword on a par with the model’s other dimensions.
From hospitals to industrial conglomerates
Different industries, same starting point: what the organisation was already doing — even when the innovation came from outside. Click a case to see more.
From a first drawing to a strategic portfolio
In an iron and metal company with 18,000 SKUs, the process ran over four workshops — with a substantial amount of work inside the organisation in between.
“Draw the company as you see it”
Modelling the portfolio and a diversified strategy
From 18,000 SKUs to 74 business models spread across four portfolios.
Names, faces and years have been anonymised.
What happens if the specialist quits?
In a large service company, responsibility for an entire department's operations rested with one specialist. The work was carried out to a high standard, year after year — but only the specialist themselves had the full overview. Management knew the results, not the activities that created them.
What would actually happen if the specialist left the organisation — taking all the knowledge of how the work really fits together with them?
We mapped what otherwise lived in a single mind
Using Horn Innovation's mapping method, every activity in the department was mapped out. Not an idealised version of the work, but its actual scope: every contact, every process, every deliverable that had otherwise never stood gathered in one place.
The result: overview for management, job satisfaction for the employee
The mapping gave management the overview they hadn't known was missing — and made the vulnerability visible before it became a problem. But it did something for the employee too: seeing her own work laid out as one coherent picture brought a different kind of calm and pride in the task.
“It was its own kind of growth to go on the journey through my own work — to have everything turned over in my head. I obviously know what I need to do, but now I actually think about it. Satisfaction — and a certain pride.”— Mette S.
Where does the communications department's time actually go?
We were working inside a large organisation. Horn Innovation was the organisation's short-term resource. As a smaller task, the focus turned to the communications department. The days went on everything from press releases and website copy to meeting preparation and proofreading — but neither the staff nor management could say exactly how much time went where, or which tasks actually created value.
How much of a communications employee's week goes to external outreach — and how much disappears into back-office tasks? No one had ever actually counted.
We mapped a total of 96 activities, one by one
Using Horn Innovation's mapping method, every single activity in the department was mapped out — from press releases and guided tours to internal scripts and meeting preparation. Not an idealised job description, but the actual scope: 96 mapped business models.
From 96 to 11 — consolidated into three portfolios
The 96 were consolidated into 11 business models across three portfolios, each with its own share of working time: external outreach and marketing (45%), back-stage improvement of internal work (35%), and management and staff tasks (20%). For the first time, the breakdown was clear — not as a hunch, but as a number.
The three portfolios and their share of working time — the breakdown is real; hours and organisation are anonymised.
Modelling and short-term implementation
The mapping was turned into action: six new business models — from a reference group to a student-assisted backup function — were launched as a first implementation, with a clear timeframe of maximum three months, before the department's strategy was finally set: the principle behind Horn Innovation's concept is that once a strategy is decided, it is “built” to be long-term — only exogenous shocks will require a new strategic focus.
The short-term model — six new business models, launched after the mapping.
The result
Where the work used to live as a hunch inside each individual employee, it now exists as a picture that management can see, prioritise from, and act on — with a clear timeframe. That also means: if something comes in, something else has to go, or priorities have to shift. Management is now built on actual data, not hunches.
Research and international network
PhD and MSc in Economics — but the road there ran through 17 years of practical business experience as a consultant and project manager, before his own research took over from 2002 to 2015 at Aalborg and Aarhus University. There, Ole co-created the Business Model Cube — a conceptual alternative to Osterwalder's Canvas — and originated the Vertical Butterfly and the Where to Look model himself. This model combines micro- and macroeconomics, where the Business Model Cube methodology works alongside classical, neoclassical, co-evolutionary, institutional and ecological economic theory. And because no task is best solved by one mind alone, Horn Innovation is a network firm: what clients get access to is never just one man's labour, but a network of competencies.
European Commission — Associated Expert
Among other things, Ole carried out 4 ex-ante evaluations for the Kingdom of Denmark as an associated expert for the European Commission.
ISPIM
International Society for Professional Innovation Management. Member since 2015 — the same year the Vertical Butterfly was introduced.
AIEST
International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism. Ole was the first Danish member, admitted in 1992.